welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour in a moment we'll be taking your calls in our new york take my take a live segment so if you have something to say around give us a call right now at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four and in tonight's daily take while america's housing crisis continues to linger like a bad cold lawmakers in washington are doing very little to help the nation's

devastated homeowners what will it take for lawmakers to realize that helping homeowners means helping the entire economy to. take my take live our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air any topic you want it's it's it's an open mike time the show we call it or anything goes give us a call it two or two and i know for twenty one thirty four so our first caller of the night jim in philadelphia eight jim what's on your mind and i. hope. ok today on our radio show we had a number of really interesting topics the first was we had reverend bill keller on

talking about how he was suggesting that people write in jesus as their as their as their vote don't don't vote for obama or his right in jesus and so i was asking ok you know who would jesus vote for and you know who represents those values and bill is a hardcore right wing fundamentalist so it's really interesting that now said people talking about big bird kevin in manhattan is on the line right now kevin thanks for calling two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four what's on your mind. i just want to make a comment about. the p.b.s. last romney talking about flashing totally slashing p.b.s. five spend an hour a lot for a lot of people that's their only form. higher marks you now and dance and music and when i was growing up those were my nature programs

a lot of people did not ask cable t.v. i have cable t.v. obviously i'm watching you and i think it's a tragedy that this man can actually sit back and you now discourage people from seeing the great performances. such as nature programs the arts b c news. sherlock holmes all the great mysteries all the quality programming that. i'm with you have al and i appreciate your perspective and your and your call i think he said it well and you know in the u.k. the government funds the taxpayers fund it's two dollars a year i mean our contribution of p.b.s. here in the s.s. is around a dollar a year per person but they fund the b.b.c. it's got all kinds of educational programs a lot of fascinating stuff in france for us they have they have ever national program most countries do this. ours is get

a little weird it seems canada in upper marlboro maryland canada thank you for calling what's on your mind tonight. oh moved you know. when i'm looking to grieve and come together and you know pull me up and what is it going to take in this country to. the saying put it in the village book it can it's one of the things that there's actually two differences between our situation and that agrees the first is that it's just a heck of a lot worse in greece right now and when it was as bad i mean look at greek unemployment it's where we were in one nine hundred thirty two and in one nine hundred thirty two you had the biggest occupation movement of the twentieth century here in north america in the united states you had people the bonus army they were literally camped from the lawn of the white. house all the way down to the potomac river you know tens of thousands of people and fact president hoover had douglas mcarthur you know come in with tanks and on horseback and try to burn him out and

unsuccessfully so there was this enormous pressure that was happening people were in the streets because it was so bad and i think frankly if obama hadn't done his stimulus and if we were still losing seven hundred thousand jobs a month like we were when bush left office and you know the first month or so the obama administration before the before the obama policies really kicked in that we would be in the streets right now like greece's and like we were in one thousand nine hundred two so one is not that bad here in two in greece and in most of europe what you find is that you know more than half and it varies from country to country in germany i believe it's well over eighty percent logs in and even countries over ninety percent of the workforce is unionized and the unions serve as a way of pulling people together to try to get out on the streets and speak out and here in the united states ronald reagan kicked off that war on working people and in it you know when when he went after patco and so that was the you know that's

a kind of thing i appreciate the call thank you very much karen in seattle hey karen what's on your mind today hi i was just talking to your producer that was there for just about union. my husband belong to the biggest in the world and he was the worst thing we did not go after reagan when he went after the air traffic controllers i agree and i'm afraid that it's going to get so bad like that people get together. well you know about you know i i think that we can do it with or without unions in again and good looking back in one thousand thirty two in the united states it wasn't until nine hundred thirty four or thirty five as i recall that the wagner act was passed the national labor relations act that. legalized unions and gave government power to you to to unionize people and and so in thirty two when you had the bonus army camp and you had people all across

america demanding change which led to the election of the landslide election of franklin roosevelt that election there were not that many union members so so in areas that could be you there tom and you know we've feel in the seattle area really even a nuke is a very unionized town but we feel that people are just regular people are going union because they're mad at our health care our good health care and our good benefit and it's regular people my own family get mad now we have such good benefits and you know you get and they will but everybody union i've been we cannot afford it they would still have a care and i totally appreciate what you're saying it's very well said and let's have a race to the top and what the conservatives have successfully done is they've been worker against worker by saying hey you know you've got this lousy wal-mart type job or staples type job you know you have no benefits but that person over there they're in a union and they've got all these benefits you should feel jealous of them which is a horrible way to you know do any of this is anti-american is destructive of

america chris and winnipeg canada hey chris thanks for calling what's on your mind tonight. hi tom i was just calling i want to ask you both well i read your book an equal protection not a great book thank you and i just wanted to ask you what your take is on the whole corporate personhood as it applies to. people like you i'm sure you've heard both the free men movement or the corporate citizens or what they call it is a sovereign citizen which is really seems like kind of an oxymoron anyway because you're either a small citizen you can't really be both but i was just wondering how you felt about the possibility that the whole corporate personhood has actually worked into the capitalized name and the social security and the whole bankruptcy laws of thirty three or thirty four something in the states can you comment on i think the

concept of corporate personhood the corporations are people and that money is speech and the corporations have rights of free speech and therefore those rights of free speech extend to political speech is one of the most toxic things that's going on here in the united states chris and i i really appreciate your bringing up this topic as to the sovereign citizen movement. i really think that's completely disconnected from that that's you know a group of people who in a way are trying to take us back to before the constitution being ratified seventy nine hundred seventeen eighty nine and putting us back into the articles of confederation which is what we were operating on before that as a nation and with powerful states and weak federal government and we're not going to go back i mean they tried when there was a really serious attempt to basically roll back the federal constitution in the. late eighteenth fifty's early sixty's and we called it the civil war ultimately i mean that led us right to the civil war so i think those are very very very

different things very in delaware county pennsylvania a very welcome to the program thanks for calling in thank you thank. tom my comment is that bank you are far is that what you got might call it and mitt romney for the blue is not going to we if you read the title not going to talk is going to start and weird to talk of blue when it wouldn't start if you bombard. you don't you know i kissed on going to long rush on don't try not to talk about i'm going to be stalked i don't know what you're going to what you think well you're right i think that there is a possibility of a world war one scenario and very i appreciate your calling in making that point in world war one when archduke ferdinand was assassinated nobody could you know nobody imagined that the world would be plunged into war as a result of that but but you know the country a had a treaty with country b. that said if they were attacked and they were attacked and it just kind of there was this domino effect by the time we got to the war nobody could actually i mean

to this day people can explain why we had world war one so i think you're absolutely right that there's a very real possibility that if we let romney go or if romney became president he were to go off on this oh let's attack iran let's attack this list that it could lead to a world war and the other thing that gives me pause is this whole concept that strauss and how it talked about we did a conversation is a great minds conversation with neal how the co-author of the fourth turning which is a book about how there's these four generations that just continuously cycle through western civilization about every eighty years each generation is about twenty years and one generation experiences war and a depression and out of that comes big there are children then as a result of growing up in that experience they become the quiet builders and then that generation gives birth to a question to a generation that questions with already and then that jenna and then that generation gives birth to a to do and by the way is on spiritual search and that generations children they say are you know spiritual search didn't get you anywhere why should i do that is

going to make money and then that generation that that third generation is making money or fourth generation is making money all the time. rations the economy you go into a depression and you get a world war so i think the one big dangerous outcome of what you just identified is that we're now eighty years since the last time that happened which was the great depression of world war two eighty years before that was the great depression the eight hundred fifty six and and the civil war eighty years before that was the great depression of the seventeen sixty's late seventy's sixty's early seventy's seventy's and the american revolution eighty years before that there was another one so you can you can look at this and say it concerns me and you know that's it for your take my take it live thank you for all your calls we didn't get your call tonight give us a shout next week. after the break as many european nations continue to struggle at the hands of austerity based economic policies iceland and ireland are managing to stay afloat and even prosper what do they know that other nations dollars and

shouldn't our lawmakers in washington be listening. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you

glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money to use our own are a fool you know what kind of my terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want the usa to defeat terrorism be a liberal and a christian apologist i can see your beliefs about it because it's going to support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit

driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage because of breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. in news around the world the united nations is calling for a new social safety net for the word world's poor un experts warned that most people around the world do not have adequate social protection from things like illness disability unemployment and high food costs so the u.n. is proposing a twenty billion dollars global social safety net to help people living in the world's forty eight poorest nations developing nations are being asked to contribute two thirds to the cost of the social welfare program while rich nations

are asked to foot the remainder of the bill the un's special report tourer food explain that this is a good investment for the world saying acting preventative lee is much less expensive than intervention on an ad hoc basis because eight times more to act in famine by having safety nets in place it will not be so necessary to intervene at an emergency stage here in the united states we've forgotten this lesson was while our own social safety nets are under unprecedented assault by billionaires like mitt romney and iran followers like his running mate ron paul ryan we need to understand that access to food when you're hungry access to a job when you're poor access to shelter when you're cold and access to health care when you're sick or not watch your ease that the well off should grant to the poor obama's these are basic human rights.

crazy alert to having to hold for better and for worse over a large zoom through ma. in the strange and largely unheard unheard of world of life care rain there is no better team than ty eastoe miss ten and christina hop pena and they proved it over the weekend the finnish couple won the north american wife carrying championship in maine on saturday beating out couples from across america and canada so what exactly is life to carry you may ask well basically what it sounds like the husband carries the wife on his back as the parents are versus a challenging and grueling course of mud logs sand hills and more the couple that completes the course in the fastest amount of time wins for their victory of mid-term and happen in one five hundred thirty dollars and happens weight in beer

interestingly enough during the wife carrying championship there was a simultaneous event going on a couple towns away in north american dragging your husband off the couch championship. it's the good the bad and the very very cruel and. ugly the good obama for america president obama's campaign has released a new ad poking fun at mitt romney's debate comments last week that he would cut funding to p.b.s. big bird take a look. at this cause. primitives gluttons of greed and the toad over them one man has the guts to speak isn't

a big bird big bird big bird it's me a period big yellow a menace to our economy it ruined the dome so it's not one street you have to worry about it's system a street i'm going to stop the subsidy to p.b.s. mitt romney taking on ok to be no matter where this. politician in america is ready and willing to take on the most important and pressing issues of our time the greed and corruption is taking over sesame street watch out cookie monster miss coming for you next with your cookies are from seven eleven. the bad corrections corporation of america if you want to understand why prison privatization is so bad look no farther than the lake erie correctional facility in ohio america's first privately owned state prison according to a recent audit of the facility the prison has no emergency fire plan prison cells are rarely clean prisoners are forced to sleep on the floor medical treatment is

a joke and the quality the food served to the prisoners is sub par at best. basically c.c.a. is denying these prisoners who are by the way human beings basic human rights this is because with private prison companies like c.c.a. the only thing that matters is profit and the bottom line the fact that prisoners have to live in squalor paranoid doesn't mean a whole lot. and the very very ugly charlie fuqua book why is a republican running for the arkansas state legislature and let's just start by saying he has some very disturbing views first foot while believes that all muslims should be expelled from the united states hand he thinks this sentiment is shared by most americans but that's nothing compared to his view on unruly children in his book released earlier this year writes that a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for

parents the death penalty is not something to be taken lightly yeah you heard that right the death penalty for unruly kids i think this comment really speaks for itself and its fury. ask any economist and they'll tell you that the housing crisis is still very real and very much with it is still one of the major headwinds for our economic recovery yet in the last presidential debate. cricket's virtually no attention paid to this crisis and the millions of americans who are on the verge of losing their homes why is it well because both candidates know the one best solution of the mortgage

crisis is to make the banks take a hit. and as anyone who's familiar with post citizens united money pours out of the sky from the big corporations in the billionaires politics knows if you're in favor of a policy that's going to hit wall street it's got a lot of the money and you want to be elected to political office then you better keep your mouth shut about and that's exactly what both men did. but in ireland they're not afraid of the banks toure's this year the irish government is expected to pass a law that will force the banks to write down principle on their home loans which will also substantially lower monthly mortgage payments for struggling homeowners of all the nations hit by the global housing crisis not a single one has taken bold steps to help homeowners at the expense of the banks toure's until now ireland is trying to change that here's what they're doing

they're going to change their banks of bankruptcy laws to make it easier for struggling homeowners to walk away from an underwater home mortgage and when a homeowner declares bankruptcy this way bank gets nothing so faced with the threat of individual bankruptcies and getting nothing the banks will suddenly have a lot of incentive to lower the principal owed and also thus reduce the monthly mortgage payments for homeowners down to a level were people can actually afford to stay in their homes that way irish people can stay in their homes and the banks will least get something as ireland's justice minister said this legislation gives homeowners hope for the future. iceland has taken similar measures since the two thousand and eight meltdown after taking control of their banks the icelandic government has forgiven loans belonging to more than a quarter of the population and today the result is a slam economy is expected to grow two point four percent this year compared to the

rest of europe growing at only point two percent as in zero point two iceland two point four proof is out there helping homeowners instead of helping banks toure's is actually good for the economy so let's talk about the united states number two thousand and eight we were told by bush and treasury secretary hank paulson everything is going to collapse unless we wrote a big fat no strings attached bailout check for wall street. that we had to bail out wall street so that wall street could then in turn turn around and bail out main street they actually did it twice bailed out wall street and we now know that didn't work out too well for anyone except the wall street bankers all street took their bailout money the banks paid each other massive bonuses they started gambling in the market again in the homeowners were left out of the equation when the obama administration pushed through legislation the democrats in

congress pushed legislation to give the states money to help their citizens write down the principal on their mortgages yes this legislation actually passed and signed by the president virtually all of the republican controlled states took that money and used it to pay for tax cuts for rich people average homeowners and most of the states saw another so when democrats proposed legislation to stop that prop practice and actually force them to use that money to really help all mothers the republicans blocked it in both the house and the senate because helping out of homeowners might have had a political benefit to president obama and we can't have. so here we are today wall street is doing better than ever and main street is still drowning in foreclosures problem is we didn't do it iceland and what ireland is about to do and that's helped the homeowners in fact that's exactly what franklin roosevelt did

in one nine hundred thirty three to deal with a very similar housing crash to the one we're dealing with today during the housing bubble in the one nine hundred twenty s. banks handed out a bunch of three and five year mortgages to americans who were riding high on the bubble of the roaring twenty's but after the housing market collapsed forcing the nation into a great depression in the early thirty's those three and five year mortgages suddenly came due and homeowners could no longer afford them and just like today the banks were unwilling to write new mortgages so also just like today foreclosures began skyrocketing across our nation that's when president roosevelt stepped in and created the home owner's loan corporation the h o l c as it was called was given the power to issue new loans to homeowners who are on the verge of foreclosure they took the existing three and five year mortgages radically lowered the monthly payments by turning them into fifteen year mortgages it's program only issued new loans for about three years between one hundred thirty three and one

hundred thirty six before effectively being shut down but that was all it took to stop the housing crisis back then just three years today we're five years out from the housing bubble bursting and no one in washington seems to have a damned clue about how to help homeowners but history and examples of ireland and iceland tell us exactly what we need to do. we know how to do this we did it here before the thirty's but it means in all cases denying the banks hers a few years a billion dollar bonuses. you know frankly wall street's gotten enough favors over the last four years american homeowners need help now. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday. twenty twelve for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites at tarpon dot com free speech dot org. and if you missed any of the night's show you can now watch again who it would dot com slash the big picture

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